Rebecca Marshall FarnbachTelling stories about the past is like telling fairy tales beginning with “once upon a time” and ending with “and they lived happily ever after.” In truth, many stories about Temecula end happily for the people involved, because of our comfortable climate and good neighbors.This story starts with Senor Maria José Gonzalez’ birth in Cadiz, in the Basque region of Spain in 1835. He studied accounting in Scotland and married a lass named Margaret Ormiston. They boarded a ship bound for California and started a journey eastward through China and the Philippines. We don’t know the circumstances, but Margaret died before José arrived in San Francisco in the early 1870s. There he met Juan Murrieta.Juan Murrieta and his brother Ezequiel, fellow Ba
